Breaking All The Rules
by GeminiPiper
Summary: Sequel to The Cardinal Rule. Five years later, Piper and Leo are going through martial issues. Only, she keeps saying it's not him, it's her. But is it possible that it's someone else? Someone from Piper's past? AU, no magic, I disclaim.
1. It Never Really Ends

**AN: I'm BAAAAACK! Not only am I back, but I'm bringing you guys exactly what you want: A sequel to "The Cardinal Rule"! I was reading back at all the reviews for "The Cardinal Rule" and it was like, hot damn, I really better right a sequel and lo and behold here it is. I'm not a big fan of this chapter, just cause I think I'm tackling a chunk of writer's block, but anyway, there are a lot of characters from "The Cardinal Rule" that will be appearing in this fic, so I'm bringing back all our loveable Bolepick residents. And well, one more person but that's a mystery…**

Five years changed a lot.

Leo was convinced he still had a pretty nice body. However, he wasn't exactly out in the trenches of construction anymore. His office tended to lean towards the corporate side, wardrobe and body reflecting. As for Piper, he thought all the softer places and new curves on her body were sexy as hell. Not that he really touched her a lot anymore, but that was a different story. All in all, he figured they had the American dream. Both parents held down a steady job, and their houses was bought and paid for. They had two beautiful daughters, Emma, now eleven, which was both joyous and terrifying, and little, five-year-old Anne, with her mother's hair and her father's eyes.

But it was the current state of his marriage that had Leo reflecting on it a lot. Lying with his arms folded behind his head, watching Piper change, he thought that its current state was hellacious.

"Don't look at me like that." Piper said, dropping into the chair tucked in the corner of their bedroom. She started to latch up a strappy, sexy stiletto around her foot. "I have to go to the club tonight. I have a lot of bands to arrange."

"Couldn't you just get Sandy to do it?" He asked, referring to the new girl she'd just hired. "I rented _The Notebook_."

She gave him a classic little smirk as she switched feet. "You think that'll get me into bed?"

Leo grinned. "It's worth a shot. I hear that movie opens receptors in a woman's brain that—"

"I'm taking the pick-up." She interrupted, standing. Her own car, a black SUV, had just been dropped off that day in order to have the brakes repaired, and his silver Ford was the only other option. She walked past the end of the bed, towards the dresser, where her jewelry box sat. They were in silence for sometime, until she said: "It's not you. It's me."

He sighed. "Honey, that's something you tell someone when you want to break up with them."

Piper turned, her hair piled on her head in that _Glamour_ magazine kind of way, and gave him a sad half-smile. "Leo, I married you. I'm in for the long haul."

"Then what is it?" Leo had to ask. He hadn't intended to have this very open-ended conversation right now, but it was being coaxed out of him like that doomsaying groundhog on Groundhog's Day.

Piper sighed too. "Leo, can we not do this now—"

"No!" Leo said, stabbing his finger into the forest green bedspread to make a point if nothing else. "We'll do this now!" Piper huffed, and he could tell that she was getting mad. "Piper, please." He sighed again, hoarsely. "We haven't had a real conversation beyond something about the house or the kids in months. I haven't touched you in months. We haven't cooked together, or turned on jazz and just danced together in this room right her in god knows how long." He couldn't look at her just then, preferring instead to gaze at the ceiling. "What's wrong with us?" he asked throatily. "What the _hell_ is wrong with us?"

Even if she was going too, Piper never go the chance to reply because Anne flew in, landing with a loud giggle on the comforter next to her father. Seconds later, the reason for her running was discovered as tall, lanky Emma ran in after her and jumped on the bed as well.

"Annie," she yelled, using the little girl's nickname, "give it to me! Give it back to me!" She screeched at the end as she struggled with her sister for whatever it was in her sister's iron-grip.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Leo admonished, sitting up to balance his weight on his hip. He used and arm for each and wrestled the girls apart. Both of them were breathing heavily and when Leo pried Anne's fingers apart he found the root of the problem—a tube of glittering lip-gloss.

"It's mine!" Emma shouted.

"But she said I could have it!" Anne argued.

"I did not!" Emma roared.

"Yes. You. DID!" Anne screeched back, her last word landing on one of those ear-piercing, incredibly high-pitched screams only young children could accomplish.

Leo snatched the lip-gloss away. "Well guess what?" Of course, he didn't wait for an answer. "Now it's mine."

"_Daddy_!" Emma and Anne said together. In answer, Leo opened the tube and used the wand to smear glitter all over his lips. He looked completely ridiculous, and his daughters were shocked speechless, but Piper couldn't help falling love all over again. Leo swatted his daughters out of the bed and fake-berated them out of the room. After they left, he didn't bother to wipe his mouth off.

In her fantasies, Piper would've walked over there, straddled him, and kissed his make-up away. But right now, she just couldn't. Not yet. She picked up the keys to the pick-up. "I'm gonna go know. Even us owners have to do some work now and then."

Leo sighed. "Piper, you know we need to—"

"Yeah, I know Leo." Piper admitted. "I know."

**XxXxXxXxX**

Sometime around one o'clock, Piper retreated from the noise and dancing and camaraderie of her club, P3, to the back office. She booted up her sometimes elusive laptop—memo to herself, see into getting a new one—and logged onto the internet. There was the invitation to the chatroom, the one you could only get into by invitation. And she was the only person invited.

She logged in with her username, nothing fancy, nothing clever, just her own name. And he was there, waiting with his.

**Adam: **You came!

**Piper: **And you thought I wouldn't?

**Adam:** Well, no, but………

**Piper:** I get it.

**Adam:** I want to talk to you, but first, I want to extend an invitation. Would you like to come visit me? Maybe during an upcoming weekend? I know you've got kids and a husband and everything, but I want you to come. I got money and everything.

**Piper:** You really want me to come?

**Adam:** Yes.

**Piper:** Then I'll come. And foot the bill.

**XxXxXxXxX**

Piper and Phoebe sat in a tiny café, sipping coffee and eating a cinnamon roll and bagel, respectively. Piper's hair was twisted back in a chignon, which she kept fiddling with.

Phoebe grabbed Piper's hand to still them. "Okay, put the hand down and step away from the hair." She laughed. "What's up?"

Piper smiled half-heartedly. "It's…nothing, really."

Phoebe raised an eyebrow and ran a finger through threw the bangs of her newly shorn hair. She was still getting used to the saucy pixie cut. "Nothing?"

Piper sighed. She liked this café. She and Phoebe liked to hang out here, especially at lunch because their husband and fiancée, correspondingly, came in here on their lunch break. As a matter of fact…

"…And so," Leo was saying as he and Bret Miller, Phoebe's longtime love, strolled through the door, "if _America's Most Wanted_ is on, just go take a cold shower." He spotted his wife and his entire face brightened. "Honey!" He said, moving in to kiss her. She turned her face ever so slightly, so that his lips caught her cheek instead. She couldn't let him love her just now. Not when there was so much she was hiding. Leo's whole body stiffened.

None of them missed the exchange and the fact that they lived in a little town where every knew, but no one said a thing made it much harder. Before he could really pull away, she gripped the lapels of his jacket, in that kind of half-hug. He was still pissed, covering up an even deeper emotion: sadness. She didn't mean to hurt him, but she could let him love her when there was so much he couldn't know. When she was such an awful person. When she led him on this way.

"Honey," she said slowly, "do you guys want to join us?"

Bret and Phoebe physically recoiled from the tension at the table. Yeah, they wanted to stick around like they wanted to tarred and feathered. "Phoebe," Bret said delicately, "there's a color I wanted to show you that might look god for the flowe—"

"I'm there!" Phoebe said, scooting out of the chair. She and Bret wandered towards the flower shop across the street and Leo slid into the seat the younger sister had just vacated.

Leo covered her hand in his, his face intent, the look in his eyes intense. "Piper, you have to talk to me."

Piper nodded slowly pulling at the collar to her long caramel colored pea coat, which was really more of pea jacket in its weight. "You're right." She said mildly. Then, she looked him dead in the eye. "I need to go to New York."

"New York?"

"Nightclub owner's convention." she lied.

"A convention?"

"That's right."

Leo sighed, leaned back in his seat, and ran his hands roughly over his face. When he sat back up again, his eyes were gleaming once more. "Tell me what you want me to do. If you want me to walk to that flower shop, and buy you the biggest damn bouquet of roses they've got, then I'm there. If you want me to take you back to Greece—Hell, if you're feeling nostalgic, we'll go back to the treehouse, but goddamn it, don't you do this, don't you shut me out!"

Piper glared at him. This was how there fights went. He asked how he could do better, yet there was nothing he could do. He knew this. He would accuse her of shutting him out, and she would get pissed.

"Look, Leo there's nothing you can do—" Then, she stopped, because now, he just looked tired. So, she didn't shut him out. She shut down. "Dinner will be ready when you get home." She said, gathering her purse together, "Have a nice day." She started out of the café, an made it to the glass door, when he grabbed her and turned her around.

"We've become them." He said solemnly.

"Who?" she asked, annoyed.

"Holly Homemaker and Big Corporate Hubby." And she was floored. It was true. They were them. Without the hot sex. Oh God. Leo sighed. Yes, good, he was getting through to her. "You once told me, that it was a cardinal rule to tell someone you love them. Well guess what? It's a cardinal rule to act like it too."

Piper took a step back from him, his comforting smell, embrace, to clear her head. And when she did, she had to push him away one last time. "Well, I guess I'm breaking all the rules."

**AN: Don't fret, don't worry. That's all I can say. Peace and please review! It gets better, promise! **


	2. Home, Coming and Going

**AN: This chapter will clear up all of your concerns about Piper's "affair." Hehehe…**

Phoebe had said to treat it like a mini-vacation. That was what she'd managed to whisper as Leo had rounded up Emma and Anne, who'd run off to Cinnabon. When they'd gotten back, Leo had taken her in his arms and kissed her breathless. It was if he knew she was going off to something new, some outstanding adventure—and he wanted to be sure she still wanted him when she got back.

Piper just kept replaying the scene at the airport—that kiss, her kids, as she slid the key into the door of her hotel room. It opened easily and the first sound she heard was the trickling of a fountain in the entryway. The room was cast in shadow, but she could tell it was decorated in warm, neutral tones like, beige and caramel. She wheeled her luggage into the bedroom and propped it up against the bed, dropping her matching duffel bag on the caramel, gold-and-red embroidered bedspread.

She brushed her hair away from her face and sat down on the aforementioned bed. She carefully pulled off her heels and then her leather gloves away from her manicured fingers. She placed them carefully together on the nightstand. She checked her messages to make sure she had the meeting time and place correct. Then, she curled up on the bed, and for the first time in a long time, she let herself cry.

**XxXxXxXxX**

He was undeniably, indisputably handsome. Kind of the same color hair as her, but more chocolaty. He had green eyes and that don't-mess-with-me-even-though-I'm-the-nicest-guy-you'll-ever-meet tilt to his mouth. Stunning green eyes and preppy-emo clothes. He acted like he'd already had too much coffee, his legs jumping as he glanced around him his wavy hair falling in his eyes.

She watched him from the window of the coffee shop before strolling in. She strolled right up to the table. "Hi." She said softly. He grinned, if awkwardly, and showed straight white teeth. She gripped her purse tightly in her hand and suddenly, standing there, she felt like a mother. She had pictures of her girls practically spilling out of her bag, which was also brimming over with tissues and pens and fliers sent home from school. And as if that wasn't enough, her she was staring at Adam, her Adam.

Her son.

"Hi." He said finally. Another awkward moment. "Are you going to sit?"

Piper nodded eagerly and slipped into the chair opposite him. She stared at him, the classic lines of his fifteen-year-old face, even though he was handsome now, he'd probably be exceedingly so, when he hit his stride. "So." She said finally.

"So." He replied. She didn't have anything to say—for once, her panicking didn't make her blubber on and on. Then, the most amazing thing happened: he did it for her. "This is weird isn't it? I mean, we've done the whole email-online-chat-room thing, but face-to-face is so…weird." He finished lamely.

Piper nodded. "You're right, it is." Silence. "Well, do you have any questions for me?"

He looked down into the dregs of his coffee cup, unable to look at her face. "Why'd you give me up?" He looked up, despair and alarm written over his features. "I mean, that's what they always ask in TV and books and stuff, but I mean, really. Why'd you give me up?"

Piper sighed. She'd expected this. She closed her eyes and suddenly, she was back at that time, a month after leaving Bolepick…

**XxXxXxXxX**

_The music throbbed uncontrollably, like a beating heart, the over and over again tattoo pumping out some insane tempo, something no dancer could keep up with, but could certainly have fun trying. _

_Ah, so this was what a rave was like. Phoebe, at sixteen and a complete wretch, had dragged a depressed Piper to it, claiming that she needed to get over the ball and ball. Ha-ha. Piper hadn't been in the mood, but after showering and playing some good music, finally agreed. She'd thrown on a tank top, with tight capris and a light, floor dusting jacket. Phoebe had gone the opposite direction—less was more: less skirt, less shirt, less everything equaled more skin and more attention. _

_At the party, Phoebe wandered off in the glow-stick darkness, leaving Piper to fend for herself, weaving her way in and out of gyrating bodies. But now, here she was stuck in a semi-moshpit, unable to move and getting terrified. She watched the jostling bodies in front of her for what felt like hours. But then, from lack of oxygen and utter fear, closed them. _

_She woke up in the backseat of a car. A man sat in the front with dark hair. That was all she could tell, other than that, she was in some unknown car, with some stranger, and as far as Phoebe knew, still inside. So, she screamed. He turned quickly, turning down his music. There was as much fear in his face as there was in hers, so he did the only logical thing: he screamed too. This, in turn, made Piper stop. Since when did rapists scream?_

_She sat up. Out the window, she could see the abandoned warehouse, where the rave was being held. "Why the hell am I in here?" she demanded, turning her brown eyes on his green ones. "If you plan on touching me, so help me God, I'll tear your balls off and then—"_

_He held up a hand to silence her. "Now, wait just a goddamn minute." He growled out in a husky southern accent. "I _saved_ you! You should me thanking me, not threatening to castrate me."_

_Piper's eyes went from pissed off to quizzical. "Really?"_

"_Really." He replied. He sighed. "They were getting ready to squash your pretty face into a rave-pancake." _

"_Gross!" she laughed. Then stopped. She hadn't laughed in a long time. Not since Leo'd figured out if he tickled her just right… "I'm Piper." _

"_Well, Piper, I'm Harris. Would you like a ride home?"_

_Piper shook her head. "Nah, I've got a sister I've got to find." _

_With that, he climbed out and opened her door. She scrambled out of the backseat and wobbled, almost fell, but tripped right into his arms. Harris just gazed at her. "Hey there, girl." He said softly. _

_Piper didn't know why, but she wrapped her arms around him. His arms wound around hers in an undeniably sweet way. They stood there for a long time, lips hovering over lips. Piper knew her heart belonged to Leo, she knew that, in a way she would always belong with him. But what about the Phoebe method? Move the hell on. To another ball and ball as it were. _

"_So," she whispered in the sexiest voice she knew, "are you gonna kiss me, or not?"_

_And in that rumbling drawl of his, he replied. "Yes, ma'am." _

**XxXxXxXxX**

Piper wrung her hands, twisting them helplessly. If one thing, Adam was like her, stubborn, defiant, chased answers where he really wanted them. She could tell. From the way his green eyes refused to back down. Ah, yes, so much like her.

"I mean, your dad—is it alright to call him that?" Piper was anxious.

Adam nodded, his chin rested in the palm of his hand. "Yeah."

"Well, your dad," she went on, "was very good to me—it wasn't a quickie in the back of a car." She added sharply. "Do you understand? We were very serious." She nodded matter-of-factly. "Very serious, but Harris regarded himself as less-than. We were alright if we pretended if it was casual. But I knew he felt the same thing whenever we had sex. Whenever we made love." She was looking off distantly, as if watching the whole thing on a screen. "But, I don't know, he came from a 'bad' part of town and when he started thinking about the future, he didn't think he could give me what I needed, or, wanted.

"So," she went on, "we just pretended it was an extra-long fling. Then, I found out I was pregnant. He was devastated and overjoyed. I was terrified. What was I supposed to do? How could I tell my father? And my sisters? What would they think of me? And, finally, I settled on an abortion. All of them came with me, and they helped me pay for it. But, I couldn't do it. Harris suggested adoption. And, I…that was best. So, I told my dad. He kicked me out, that first night." There were tears in her eyes now. "And I spent it with Harris, in his trailer. After that, my dad let me back. I think it scared him to loose his little girl. Here we are, fifteen years later, and ta-da!" She gestured to him in a Vanna White impression.

Adam was silent, thinking hard. "What do you do?"

"I own a nightclub."

His jaw moved. He was thinking again. "You said you have a husband. Is he my dad?"

Piper shook her head. "No."

"You said you have kids."

"Two. Emma's really my husband's and his ex-wife's, biologically. Emotionally, she belongs to me. And Anne. She's five."

Adam nodded. "You said, that you have sisters. So, I have aunts?"

Piper smiled softly. "Yes, my older sister, Prue, she's very cool, collected, but inside, she's an utter nutcase. In that good, protective kind of way. And Phoebe, my younger sister, she's a nutcase inside _and_ out."

Adam was startled into laughter, then, softly, slowly, it died. "I've never had a mother." He started, going into his own reverie. "My adoptive mom died when I was two—I don't remember her." He sighed. "And its always been just me and my dad, you know? But I had to find you."

"Why?" Piper wanted to know. "Don't get me wrong—I'm happy to be here. But why now?"

Adam shrugged. "Well, my dad and I don't get along so well sometimes. And I figured that somewhere, out there, I had to have a parent who would listen to me."

Piper nodded, tearing up. "Is that what you want, Adam?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Mostly, I want to feel like I'm coming home."

**AN: See, it wasn't an affair! It was her dun, dun, dun—son! Wow, huh? Anyway, I love you all and was so surprised—twenty reviews for one chapter! I love you guys! Anyway, please review!**

**P.S: If you love me, go check out my story on fictionpress com. It's called "Sparkle" by JustTheGirl and you will love it, if you love any of my writing. So, please, check it out! Tell me I sent you and you get a candy bar::dangles candy wildly:**


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